Someone should have told Lord Voldemort he needn't have gone on murderous rampages and splintered his black soul to achieve immortality.

He and all the Harry Potter characters will live on in the halls of literary fame, alongside author J.K. Rowling -- who can bank on her works being studied, archived, dissected and enjoying critical acclaim long after she's gone.

As the arrival in bookstores Saturday of the seventh and final chronicle of Harry Potter's adventures, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, draws nearer, experts widely agree that Rowling leaves an indelible print on the landscape of both children's and adult literature.

In Kelvin's Hui's imagination, Harry Potter was thinner and taller than the actor who portrays him in the movies, Daniel Radcliffe.

Literary Harry had hair cropped closer to his head and grew to be a lanky, bespectacled teen.

A quick scan of Hui reveals, perhaps, a subconscious desire to have been that magical boy wizard at one time: he has a slight, boyish build, wears black, wire-framed glasses and wears his hair short and neat.

But come tomorrow morning, when the 21-year-old cracks open the final book in the series -- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows -- the wizarding world that helped lead him to adulthood will begin to close.

When the author of the Harry Potter series dropped the bombshell at New York's Carnegie Hall last Friday that the Hogwarts headmaster was gay, collective gasps of surprise and triumphant I-told-you-sos erupted the world over, causing a stir that continued to reverberate yesterday in Toronto, where Rowling made her only Canadian stop on a book tour.

MARKHAM
— Having “Canadian experience”
on the resumé means squat to managers at Samtack. And it shows.

As
one
of the largest computer-and-parts distributing companies in Canada,
the Markham-based company has been using a hiring formula that taps
into the skills of international immigrants, instead of dismissing their
native work experience as irrelevant, as many companies might.

They are apprentices of perhaps the world's most noble of professions.

They are the cream of Canada's crop, brilliant minds that are able to decode the complexities of the human body. They work to cheat death and buy the dying more time.

But in order to be deemed worthy, medical residents themselves are expected to defy the needs of the human body and save others on 24-hour call shifts.

While other industries understand that fatigue poses a safety risk to both themselves and those they serve, doctor trainees manning emergency rooms and intensive care units must make life and death decisions often with little to no sleep.

Nicole began to notice the physical changes in her five-year-old daughter in quiet disbelief. Alexa’s breasts were almost fully developed, big enough to fill a girl’s training bra.

Her little girl’s scent — discernable to a mother’s senses — was noticeably changed. She was moody and socially mature for her age, preferring the conversation of adults to the giggle of kids her own age.

At a time when there’s a heightened consciousness of hormone-mimicking chemicals, and when children are increasingly sexualized by images of young, pantyless Hollywood starlets, parents and professionals alike are debating the age-old question with renewed fervour: Are children growing up too fast?

Studies suggest the age of puberty among girls is declining — a topic of controversy that divides the medical community.

Could scandalously sex-laden images that are so ubiquitous in Western society trigger a biological response in children and explain earlier breast development in girls? Could we be complicit in bringing up a sexually precocious generation of children?